


Jane Crocker and the Case of Humpty Dumpty

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Series: The Adventures of Jane Crocker, Private Eye [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Gen, Trans Character, Transgender, Unrequited Love, trans!Jane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>title is self-explanatory</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jane Crocker and the Case of Humpty Dumpty

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the series established by [Jane Crocker and the Missing Tarts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/310308). It's only vaguely connected to canon, takes place in a nursery-rhymed populated alternate universe of Jane's imagination, and is basically just me playing fast and loose with basically everything. Most experimental writing from me--quality not guaranteed.
> 
> Additional Warnings: a description of a dead body, but nothing graphic.

You lean back in your chair, put your feet on the desk, crossed at the ankles. There are holes in your smooth black stockings from where the leather straps of your very sensible shoes have worn through.

You’re not one to drink on the job, but you have a tumbler of sparkling water held in a loose fist while you blow rings from coiling blue smoke, genies in your cigarette.

A bird flies in with a click of copper gears, slick with oil shining the steel wings, a susurrus of foil-thin plates making ripples in the summer humidity, eyes red with Strider’s forge fire.

It touches down on your hand, flinty nails digging in for purchase in the soft brown webs of skin between your fingers. “Humpty Dumpty’s had a fall,” it says.

“That’s not the name of the Great Egg,” you say. “It’s a petty and inconsequential children’s name to explain a phenomena that nobody currently understands.”

“Humpty Dumpty’s had a fall,” it says.

You flick the bird from your finger and it squawks the same thing. “I would have preferred to discover what’s been inside it all this time if it had been lucky enough to hatch in my lifetime,” you say. You linger in the mirror, smooth the wrinkles from your pale white blouse, take out the tube of red lipstick from your trouser pocket, pull it across your lips. “I hope it wasn’t tomfoolery or misconceived japery—“ you smack your lips at your reflection – “because that would be unfortunate.”

The courts were fanged after all, like the forests surrounding the village.

You pull on your fedora, drag your thumb across the top your lip, satisfied that it feels mostly smooth, just the barest scrape of stiff hair, and then close the door behind you.

There is a crime to solve, a murder to detect.

And you’re Jane Crocker, the best detective for the job.  

Technically, the only detective for the job, and though you would never argue for discarding small, pithy details, you figure that it’s not of particular import if the audience knows the number of private eyes, detectives, etc. in the village.

Because you figure you’d still be the best.

The Egg was perching on the wall when you were a small child. When you’re father was a small child. When his Mother was a small child.

No one knows really where it came from. Some people reckoned it would never hatch, though you believed that sentiment to be dodgy and otherwise nonsensical.

The area’s already been cordoned off when you arrive. Pieces of egg, shattered shell fragments reminiscent of cracked slabs of rock, litter the ground. There’s someone there—a troll, bent low over the pieces, a red-tipped cane in her fist, red and teal robes flecked grey and brown from the egg and dust.

As you draw closer, the troll slicks the edge of a piece of shell with saliva, a green-tinged, barbed tongue licking up the rough surface of the stone.

“You’re disturbing the evidence,” you say.

The troll faces you. Beneath the red tinted glass of their sharply slanted edged glasses, you see the red glare of their eyes. “I’m looking at the evidence. You can dapper off elsewhere if you don’t like it.”

The troll graces you with a fanged grin, and you wonder if the brown stains on their sharper teeth, the ones that look more like daggers, are blood.

Behind the troll, there is something soft, gelatinous, covered in mucous. You approach and underneath the cloudy, sticky film, you see the vague translucence of an eye, the shiny, soft edge of scales peaking from soft, grey skin. The bit that looks vaguely like a snout is bitten with the stunted tips of fangs. “A dragon?”

The troll does not turn, and you wonder if that’s a hitch in their voice, if it’s thicker than their initial greeting. “I don’t know why you’re asking me—you’re forgetting that the prosecution cannot see.”

You rise, and look for evidence that someone could have done this. If someone could have pushed this dragon from the wall, shattered it so it could never hatch, never hold a forge in the pit of its belly. “There’s nothing to indicate that this was a murder—a murder most foul, if you prefer the colloquialism.”

“I don’t prefer it,” the troll said. “I can taste her in this.” They use their cane to help push themselves from a kneeling position until they stand high.

You have to crane your neck to find the red flare of their glasses flashing in the sun.

You figure it’s the closest thing to eye contact that you’re going to get.

“Who are you talking about?”

“I’m sure you’d like to know,” the troll says, “but I prefer the humans I encounter to wriggle in a state of continued curiosity. They do so love to squirm—“ and they sniff deeply. “You release the most unpleasant odors—“ and they dip down low until their hand rests heavy on your shoulder, until the sharp nails of their fingers dig through the silk of your shirt and pucker through the skin – “it’s like the worst junk food. You know it tastes horrible and it’s bad for your blood but you can’t stop eating it –“ they’re eye level now, and you can see the way their lips don’t quite cover their teeth, the way it hugs close to their jaws – “except you” – and suddenly, their tongue slips out between their lips, laves their nostrils, and they’re right there, their nose and the tip of their tongue so close to your mouth as they breathe deep. “You smell so good.”

You shift uncomfortably, wishing the heat in your belly wasn’t creeping down your navel, that you weren’t getting hard in your white cotton undies, and that a chill sweat wasn’t glazing your skin, goose-bumping under the wind and the damp huff of the troll’s breath.  

“I think,” you say carefully, stepping back a pace, pausing when you see that the troll only looms forward with you, “that things would proceed more comfortably if we knew each other’s names. I’m Jane Crocker.” You tip your very favorite fedora at them.

“Private Eye,” the troll says. Their thumbs come up near your eyebrows, almost touching but not quite. “Yet they’re there for just anyone to see.” And they flash you that sharp grin again.  They poke you in the sternum and you stumble back, nearly falling on your arse in an embarrassing flail of limbs.  “Call me Terezi,” they say as they swerve away, back still towards the dead dragon. “I didn’t know she’d do this.” Terezi bows their head.

“You don’t even know there is a she,” you say. “There’s nothing to indicate otherwise. Maybe it just fell down.”

“Not this. Only in a doomed timeline,” Terezi says.

You’re familiar with philosophy and physics to a certain degree, and you suppose such a thing is possible—but you also suppose that the reality of such a situation is a little out of your comprehension—a fact with which you are okay, because you figure that in the end, it just doesn’t really matter, not when there are smaller, harder, realer minutes close at hand. “What if this isn’t a doomed time-line?”

Terezi just laughs. At least you think that’s what they’re doing. It sounds a bit like a roar, like how you imagine dragons sound—hard and flinty and hot. “Then we wouldn’t be.”

“Suppose we are in our final moments—I’d imagine something as big as a universe takes quite a long time to die. A death rattle so long and low that we couldn’t possibly hear it. But that still doesn’t change the fact that we’ve got an egg off a wall before it had time hatch.”

Terezi flinches.

You stand behind Terezi, unsure what to do, so you suggest what your pal Lalonde always seems to find a suitable proposition for every circumstance. “What about a drink?”

So you go to the only tavern in town and, predictably, Lalonde is already there. She climbs up on the table when she sees you, gestures with her mug of whatever, smiling wet and big. “Jaaaaney!” she cries out, swaying to the rhythm of the tune someone’s plunking out on the harpsichord. Her pink shirt hitches up past her navel, and you see the sheen of sweat in the lantern glow.

Terezi dips their tongue into the mug that Lalonde brings them, laps it up without splattering a drop. You drink much. You don’t like the way the alcohol makes your brain fuzzy. Have to keep it sharp.

Terezi leans over you, mouth close to your ear but still they don’t speak in a whisper. “It’s the red, you know.” They smile, jaws parted you can see their tongue, and then they’re licking their nose, their lips, their teeth, the air in the space between you.

“Would you like some?” you ask.

And when Terezi nods, you take the lipstick from your trousers, twist the head until the wedge of red slips up, and draw it across Terezi’s lips. Their tongue follows your hand, licking the lipstick clean off as you go.

“This is counterproductive,” you say.

Lalonde hiccoughs in her drink.

“So just redo it again,” Terezi. “I’ll be good this time, I swear” as she grins, gaping and wide.

You do, until you decide to just give Terezi the tube. They push their chair away, wooden legs scudding across the floor planks. “Well this was lovely and fun. But there is a murderess upon the loose.”

“There was nothing at the scene to indicate otherwise,” you try to say again.

“You’re unobservant, Jane-y,” Terezi says, eyes flicking towards Lalonde who’s still focused on her drink. “Got to go.”

After the quantity of alcohol they have consumed, you expect Terezi to sway, but no—they walk steady and tall. You shake your head.

“Well, she was nice,” Lalonde slurs at you, so you give her your elbow, help her up the stairs to where she and her mom live, tuck her into bed. But she won’t sit still, kicking off the covers.

“You need me to steal stuff for you—intel and info and interests?”

“Not at this precise moment, no,” you say.

She laughs, throws an elbow over her eyes. “You haven’t asked me in a long while.”

“I’ll let you know—“

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

She smiles at you, rolls over and closes her eyes, though you don’t think she’s really asleep. But you leave anyway, return to your office, sink into the creaky chair, rub your hand over your lips. It leaves a red smear over your knuckles, and you press the tip of your tongue to the smudge of color there. You spit a little—it’s tacky and doesn’t really taste like anything at all, so you light a single cigarette to burn away the alcohol that’s left your tongue a little fuzzy, your head a little heavy.

It almost works.


End file.
